1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system and method for matching information.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are many situations in which a user might want to match information with other users. The Internet provides the ability for communication between computers throughout the world, and puts the information stored on a multitude of remote computers at the disposal of any given computer user. These remote computers may be computers that contain data that has been classified, arranged and otherwise stored and sorted in accordance with predetermined criteria. The data contained therein is likely to be located in specific fields.
Such data can have many uses, both commercial and non-commercial. Non-commercial uses include file sharing and general information exchanges. Commercial uses include on-line retail facilities.
In order to find the correct information, programs known as “search engines” have been developed which prompt the user to enter a search term or terms and the search engine will search at least a portion of the Internet to find an answer to the search query. For example, a person wishing to search for a house in Cardiff might wish to conduct a search among Cardiff's estate agents without actually going there. It is of course entirely possible to do this already. A user could find the web site of any estate agents in the Cardiff area using a standard Internet search-engine and visit each of these sites. On each site the user could fill in the appropriate form to specify their property preferences, initiate a search using these preferences, and view the details of any matching properties.
On the conclusion of this lengthy and repetitive process, the user could be satisfied that they have conducted a reasonable search of at least a sizeable portion of the properties currently available in the Cardiff area. However, if some days later the user wishes to check for any properties that have become available since their previous search, the user is required to repeat the same lengthy process from scratch.
In a commercial arena, such search engines therefore allow users to search to some limited degree at least some portion of the information held within various companies' web pages; but the ability of the user to identify actual products for purchase is limited by the necessity of the consumer to choose an applicable web site for a particular product. Furthermore, such searches are not context driven, and rely almost exclusively on simple text-based pattern matches against the contents of publicly accessible web pages. Consequently, complex, structured information of the type that might be stored within a database is rarely accessible to a standard search engine.
Dedicated company web pages provide a means for customers to search a company's “database” of information. However, these methods are not flexible in any way, and rely on a significant initial and on-going investment by the companies to customize and maintain such web pages for their particular needs. Furthermore, users must “visit” each company web-site and search for their desired information in order to investigate the products of different companies. This is often a lengthy and repetitive process, involving entering the same or very similar data on each company web site visited.
Other search engines have been developed, known as “shopping bots”, which search the Internet for specific products at a variety of locations. These shopping bots provide a means for consumers to enter context specific information for particular items they wish to purchase. These services then conduct a search among a group of suppliers for those products, and return information such as the cost and availability of these products at these various suppliers to the user.
However, these services perform periodic updates of the data from the various suppliers and cache it locally, rather than farming-out each query to the disparate and remote databases of the various suppliers. On this basis the data is only as up to date as the last time it was cached. While this might not pose a problem for information relating to the price of goods, such a system in unsuitable for dynamic information such as an item's stock levels.
Furthermore, the pool of suppliers amongst which such systems conduct searches on their customer's behalf is strictly limited and generally fairly static. In order to add an additional supplier (or indeed when any of their existing pool of suppliers significantly modifies their web site or databases), the provider of this shopping bot service must write new code, or modify their existing code, in order to accommodate this new supplier or the new format of the data.
Further drawbacks of such shopping bot systems include a lack of flexibility. The extension of such systems to new areas can only be achieved by substantial coding effort by the service providers themselves. This would involve, at the very least, modifications to the web pages that drive the service, and deciding on and liaising with the suppliers for this new area.
In a non-commercial context, instant Messaging Services provide a means for registered clients to be informed of such things as the “currently logged-in” status of other pre-determined clients. The list of pre-determined clients is often termed a “buddy-list”. In such systems a centralised Server is provided that maintains a database of active clients and periodically communicates with these active clients to update them as to the status of the other clients on their buddy-list. Such services primarily exist to offer the ability for instant communication (text, voice, and/or video) between their registered clients. Users of such systems can be matched based on their interests. However, all the match data is stored on the server and a “match” is typically little or no more than a randomly selected other user with a similar or identical recorded interest.
Furthermore, a number of computer dating systems exist that aim to aid a user to meet others having similar interests and personal characteristics. For example, a user who has recently moved to a new area will likely not know many other people and thus may have limited social opportunities available to him. Such a user may be introduced to many new people, but common interests or desirable and undesirable characteristics may not be readily apparent. For example a user may reliably be able to estimate the age of another, but not his educational level or other such characteristics that may be of interest to the user. Furthermore, a person may want to enter a relationship only with a person having a particular sexual preference, which would generally not be discernible from appearance alone.
Computer dating systems typically rely on a user specifying information about themselves and sending this information to a central server. The user specified information typically includes personal characteristics of the user and their search criteria. All this data is stored on the central server, which for a given user compares the user's search criteria with the personal characteristics of every other user. Typically the user will then be informed of any other users whose personal characteristics match their search criteria.
In such systems all the matching is performed by the central server, and the search criteria of a given user are periodically compared with the personal characteristics of every other user. This has significant drawbacks, as the central server will be required to store and manipulate a potentially very large amount of data. If the number of users is large, comparing the search criteria of a given user against the personal characteristics of every other user will also involve a significant processor load on the central server.
Such systems only have application in the area of matching the interests of one person with another person, and they would be of very limited use in other fields such as the property example given above. This is because it is not feasible for a central resource, to store and keep up-to-date the property details of all of the properties for sale in an extended geographical area.
Furthermore, the user's personal characteristics are stored on the central server and are available for viewing by other registered users. Although a user's anonymity can generally be preserved by such systems, these systems are nevertheless limited by the kind of data that a user would wish to publish on an external source. For example, a user is unlikely to be willing to enter very private or intimate details about themselves.
Such systems are also limited in scope, and users of such system can only conduct searches among other users using a predefined and limited set of fields for both their personal characteristics and search criteria. They would therefore require modifications to the underlying computer software in order to render it fit for these other purposes.